Behind the Bastards - Part Two: The Woman Who Invented Adoption (By Stealing Thousands of Babies)
Aired: 2019-05-02
Duration: 52:36


=== Georgia Tan's Terrible Con (02:27) ===

[00:00:00]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[00:00:02]  Guaranteed human.
[00:00:04]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[00:00:13]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:00:15]  He is not going to get away with this.
[00:00:17]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:00:19]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
[00:00:24]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:00:25]  Trust me, babe.
[00:00:26]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:00:31]  I got you.
[00:00:32]  I got you.
[00:00:37]  It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast Eating While Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future.
[00:00:44]  This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum-Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
[00:00:54]  There's an economic component to communities thriving.
[00:00:57]  If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they failed.
[00:01:01]  Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:01:09]  This is Amy Roebuck, alongside TJ Holmes from the Amy and TJ podcast.
[00:01:13]  And there is so much news, information, commentary coming at you all day and from all over the place.
[00:01:20]  What's fact, what's fake, and sometimes what the F.
[00:01:23]  So let's cut the crap, okay?
[00:01:25]  Follow the Amy and TJ podcast, a one-stop news and pop culture shop to get you caught up and on with your day.
[00:01:32]  And listen to Amy and TJ on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
[00:01:39]  On a recent episode of the podcast, Money and Wealth with John O'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the Budginista Alicia to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
[00:01:50]  What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
[00:01:56]  We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts too many of us were never, ever taught.
[00:02:05]  If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
[00:02:11]  Listen to Money and Wealth with John O'Brien from the Black Effect Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:02:24]  What's starting my podcast?

=== Laws Broken For Babies (13:53) ===

[00:02:27]  That one wasn't very good.
[00:02:29]  Sophie's not proud of me.
[00:02:32]  You know, they can't all be what's cracking my peppers.
[00:02:34]  They can't even all be what's boiling my pig anuses, which was another hit.
[00:02:39]  I'm Robert Evans.
[00:02:40]  This is Behind the Bastards podcast where we talk about terrible people.
[00:02:43]  But you know that if you're listening, because this is part two of the Georgia Tan story.
[00:02:47]  And if why would you just be listening to part two first?
[00:02:51]  Or you seem to get some kind of fucking maniac.
[00:02:53]  I know.
[00:02:54]  Did you murder a baby?
[00:02:58]  Sophia Alexandra, how are you doing?
[00:03:00]  You're our guest for today, comedian.
[00:03:02]  Thank you so much for having me.
[00:03:03]  Host of the Private Parts Unknown podcast.
[00:03:05]  That's great.
[00:03:07]  Kickboxing, third place finalist.
[00:03:12]  Actually, first place, kind of upset that you would not mention that.
[00:03:15]  It's actually nude kickboxing, so it's actually a lot harder than regular kickboxing.
[00:03:20]  Yeah, that seems a lot more.
[00:03:21]  I'm pretty upset that I wrote down all my credits for you and you just kind of messed them up, but whatever.
[00:03:25]  I'm sorry.
[00:03:26]  Sorry.
[00:03:27]  You did not mention like at least three other things that I've done.
[00:03:32]  I am also America's favorite lasagna.
[00:03:34]  America's favorite lasagna.
[00:03:35]  That is right.
[00:03:35]  That is right.
[00:03:36]  Thank you so much.
[00:03:36]  I apologize for mentioning that.
[00:03:38]  And America's second favorite macaroni and cheese.
[00:03:43]  Okay, yes.
[00:03:43]  I don't like to talk about second place, but I am also America's family.
[00:03:47]  I'm the second favorite macaroni.
[00:03:48]  Considering the amount of mac and cheese in this country, pretty good.
[00:03:51]  I mean, yeah, I'm not trying to be falsely modest.
[00:03:54]  Yeah.
[00:03:54]  I am delicious.
[00:03:55]  You are delicious.
[00:03:56]  Thank you.
[00:03:57]  Well, we're talking about someone who's not delicious.
[00:03:59]  No.
[00:03:59]  Georgia Tan actually is a baby thief.
[00:04:04]  And murderer.
[00:04:05]  Yeah.
[00:04:06]  And that's what we're going to talk about today.
[00:04:07]  It's all the murdering.
[00:04:09]  Oh, yeah.
[00:04:11]  Yeah.
[00:04:12]  So, Georgia Tan had a reputation for being rather fearless.
[00:04:16]  This was helpful because her habit of abducting thousands of children from poor people occasionally brought violent threats down upon her head.
[00:04:22]  According to Nellie King.
[00:04:24]  Occasionally.
[00:04:24]  Occasionally.
[00:04:25]  Some people, I don't know, felt like it wasn't right.
[00:04:29]  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:04:30]  She had iron burglar-proof bars in the windows of her home, and over the course of her career, three separate people tried to kill her.
[00:04:37]  But all of them apparently chickened out, either out of a reticence to take human life or because Georgia scared them away.
[00:04:43]  Whoa.
[00:04:43]  Yeah, she was supposed to be pretty terrifying.
[00:04:46]  She was like a very large, imposing presence and very mean.
[00:04:52]  And apparently, at least one case, like screamed a guy away who would come to her house to get revenge.
[00:04:57]  Wow.
[00:04:57]  Yeah, she's an imposing lady.
[00:05:00]  I feel like it's like a challenge I'm being presented, but it's like way too late in history.
[00:05:04]  You're like, yeah, Sophia, are you brave enough to kill her?
[00:05:07]  Are you brave enough to kill Georgia Tan?
[00:05:09]  I think I am, but it's too late.
[00:05:12]  Now, Georgia's behavior was not strictly legal.
[00:05:14]  There were actually laws in the U.S. about how to adopt babies, and she was in violation of basically all of them.
[00:05:20]  In most cases, adoptive parents had to reside in the state they were adopting from.
[00:05:23]  Surrenders of parental rights had to be confirmed in a court of law.
[00:05:26]  Georgia Tan broke both of these rules flagrantly and regularly, in some cases on a near-daily basis.
[00:05:31]  But also she had that judge in her pocket.
[00:05:33]  First was like Judge Daddy, and then the second one was that lady.
[00:05:36]  That was crazy.
[00:05:37]  Yeah, she so she like did fuck with the legal system, but she like made it work for her.
[00:05:43]  Sometimes just stole babies.
[00:05:45]  I mean, yes.
[00:05:46]  Yeah, obviously.
[00:05:48]  By the mid-1930s, social workers in Tennessee who weren't in Georgia's pocket had started to complain about all of the laws that she was breaking and babies she was stealing.
[00:05:57]  Her connections to Boss Crump were enough to protect her, however.
[00:06:00]  And in 1937, she was...
[00:06:02]  I'm sorry, Boss Crump is back from protecting the castle and the princess.
[00:06:06]  I was going to say he sounds like a guy from the Dukes of Hazzard.
[00:06:08]  Old Boss Crump is in a real mess of trouble again.
[00:06:11]  Pissed at them, Duke boys.
[00:06:13]  Yeah, just really a great fake name.
[00:06:15]  Yeah, it was a great fake name.
[00:06:16]  But in this case, it was a real guy who helped Georgia Tan steal thousands of babies.
[00:06:22]  In 1937, she succeeded in pushing through a new law, which legalized adoption for out-of-state residents.
[00:06:28]  This precedent would have a huge impact on the way adoptions are carried out nationwide moving forward, including today.
[00:06:34]  The new law, however, did require adoptive parents to visit Tennessee before finalizing the adoption, but Georgia just ignored this part of it, and it was fine.
[00:06:41]  Now, Georgia had started out as an employee of the Tennessee Children's Home Society, which was based out of Nashville.
[00:06:47]  The director of the agency, Fanny Elrod, was a rather soft person, and Georgia basically bullied her into getting whatever she wanted.
[00:06:53]  Fanny was scared of Georgia and basically refused to do anything about the many complaints made against her employee.
[00:06:59]  Since the Children's Home Society did not have a license from the state, every adoption carried out by Georgia Tan in its name was technically illegal.
[00:07:05]  But again, no one did anything to stop her, so it wound up not mattering that it was illegal.
[00:07:10]  Also, once you're getting like amazing newspaper coverage with your Christmas babies, like good luck taking that lady down.
[00:07:15]  Yeah, when are you gonna?
[00:07:16]  Everyone's like, she's a saint.
[00:07:18]  She's the Christmas baby.
[00:07:19]  Come on, she's the angel that gave people babies.
[00:07:22]  Yeah, she's the baby.
[00:07:23]  And not the angel of death.
[00:07:24]  Not the angel of death.
[00:07:26]  According to the book, The Baby Thief, quote, Georgia frequently falsified the birth dates of many children she placed for adoption.
[00:07:32]  In every case of which I learned, she reduced the children's age.
[00:07:34]  She did this to satisfy clients' wishes for the youngest possible babies and to make the children appear bright, even precocious.
[00:07:40]  While Georgia reduced the ages of babies by only weeks or months, she frequently subtracted years from the ages of older children.
[00:07:47]  So, cool.
[00:07:48]  Not dumb.
[00:07:49]  She's like basically like Hollywood.
[00:07:51]  Yeah.
[00:07:51]  She's like, I'm going to be turning.
[00:07:55]  She's looking a little haggard at 10.
[00:07:58]  So we're going to go ahead.
[00:08:00]  I'm going to pull you down to a seven.
[00:08:03]  Yeah.
[00:08:03]  That seems better.
[00:08:05]  Also, I just, there's something like just smart about being like, well, if I say this seven-year-old is four, then he seems smart.
[00:08:13]  Yeah.
[00:08:13]  Like, then he's a really advanced four-year-old and not just a normal seven-year-old, and I can sell him to a richer family.
[00:08:19]  They're like, stop saying this girl is seven.
[00:08:21]  She has a full seek up.
[00:08:22]  I mean, she's definitely 17.
[00:08:27]  It does make me wonder what Ric Flair's real age is.
[00:08:30]  Oh, my God.
[00:08:30]  I keep forgetting Ric Flair is one of the stolen.
[00:08:34]  Stolen as a baby.
[00:08:36]  Poor Ric Flair.
[00:08:38]  It's got to be traumatic.
[00:08:40]  Now, like, though, that we know how many babies she's stole and placed, like, so many Americans probably are not living with their families.
[00:08:48]  70?
[00:08:48]  But we don't know that he's 70.
[00:08:50]  He could be 72.
[00:08:51]  He could be 74.
[00:08:51]  She probably aged him down.
[00:08:53]  She probably aged him down.
[00:08:54]  Made Ric Flair seem like a super smart baby.
[00:08:56]  Not that he wasn't smart as a baby.
[00:08:58]  Yeah.
[00:08:58]  I mean, nothing against Ric Flair.
[00:09:00]  Smart guy.
[00:09:02]  Sorry you got stolen, Rick.
[00:09:04]  Also, someone stole the K from the.
[00:09:06]  If you don't make stickers that say sorry you got stolen, I don't even know what this podcast is.
[00:09:11]  Rick Flair's play.
[00:09:12]  Sorry you got stolen.
[00:09:13]  Totally.
[00:09:14]  I feel like that's merch.
[00:09:15]  Wait, you have fans?
[00:09:16]  Fan art, right now?
[00:09:17]  Fan art.
[00:09:17]  Yeah, fan art.
[00:09:18]  Get on this.
[00:09:18]  Get us the sorry you were stolen, Ric Flair.
[00:09:21]  Ric Flair merch.
[00:09:22]  We need it.
[00:09:24]  Georgia did not abduct all of her products, of course.
[00:09:26]  She trawled every orphanage and children's home in the state in search of fresh child flesh to sell.
[00:09:31]  But once her operation was up and running, her most common source of children were the maternity wards of local Memphis hospitals.
[00:09:37]  Damn.
[00:09:37]  She hired a network of spotters who would hang out waiting for poor young women, particularly single mothers, to go into labor.
[00:09:43]  Dude, it's like ambulance chasers, but like baby chasers.
[00:09:47]  Just looking around for like a lady with a big baby bump who looks like she doesn't have much.
[00:09:51]  She's like, I'm just big.
[00:09:52]  Fuck you.
[00:09:53]  I'm not even having a baby.
[00:09:54]  Stop following me.
[00:09:55]  She's just following a heavy-set woman for a couple of days.
[00:09:58]  She's just waiting until she's like, please stop.
[00:10:02]  Dr. George Lovejoy, who delivered some of those babies, later recalled, quote.
[00:10:06]  I'm sorry, Lovejoy.
[00:10:07]  Lovejoy, you are loving the last names here.
[00:10:09]  The last names are kind of their own podcast because they're amazing.
[00:10:14]  Ridiculous.
[00:10:15]  Dude, Reverend Lovejoy is a fake character on the Simpsons.
[00:10:19]  And this is a real person named Lovejoy.
[00:10:21]  I think that is a pretty common name.
[00:10:23]  I'm running into some Lovejoys.
[00:10:24]  Are you serious?
[00:10:25]  Yeah.
[00:10:26]  I mean, it is a silly name, but it's a real one.
[00:10:28]  Where are you from?
[00:10:30]  Texas.
[00:10:30]  Oh, yeah.
[00:10:31]  Probably more Lovejoys out there.
[00:10:32]  Yeah, there's a lot of Lovejoys.
[00:10:33]  Not a lot of Lovejoys in Ukraine or California, which is where I've got a Ukrainian name.
[00:10:39]  No.
[00:10:40]  Yeah.
[00:10:41]  Ukrainifornia.
[00:10:42]  Is there like a Ukrainian neighborhood in town that we couldn't?
[00:10:45]  There's a Ukrainian cultural center.
[00:10:47]  They should call the neighborhood Ukrainifornia.
[00:10:50]  Leaving money on the table.
[00:10:52]  Yeah.
[00:10:52]  Okay.
[00:10:53]  Second piece of fan art.
[00:10:55]  Ukraine in the shape of California.
[00:10:57]  Yeah.
[00:10:58]  And it just says Ukrainifornia.
[00:10:59]  It is for three people.
[00:11:03]  That's what we love doing here is jokes that half a basketball team will identify with.
[00:11:12]  Okay.
[00:11:13]  Dr. George Lovejoy, who delivered many of the babies, later recalled, quote, Georgia Tan's workers stood outside the door of the delivery room waiting.
[00:11:19]  The minute the baby was born, they would take the papers in and have the mother sign them and the baby would disappear.
[00:11:24]  Now, many of these mothers were still wasted from anesthesia when Georgia's people forced them to sign what were presented as routine papers.
[00:11:30]  This ostensibly medical paperwork was, of course, in reality a surrender of parental rights.
[00:11:34]  Babies were taken right from their drugged up mommies and flown to new homes the same day.
[00:11:38]  Part of why Jojo was so successful in this was the fact that she literally changed American culture's attitude towards single moms.
[00:11:44]  See, being a single mom has always been difficult, obviously, but for most of American history, there was not a huge stigma attached to it.
[00:11:50]  Husbands died after all.
[00:11:52]  It was like, you know, fucking, there was no medicine back then.
[00:11:54]  But starting in Memphis, Georgia labored to convince courts and the public that single white women should not be allowed to raise their own babies.
[00:12:01]  This is part of why, on the few occasions she was taken to court over it, Georgia nearly always won her cases.
[00:12:06]  No judge was going to take a baby from a rich or middle-class two-parent household and give it to a single poor woman.
[00:12:12]  Damn.
[00:12:13]  Yep.
[00:12:14]  According to the baby father.
[00:12:15]  My mom would have for sure had me stolen.
[00:12:18]  She's a single mom.
[00:12:19]  Yeah, that happened up until very recently.
[00:12:21]  Like the 70s in a lot of cases.
[00:12:23]  Yeah.
[00:12:23]  According to the baby thief, quote, by the late 1930s, single mothers were not only being prevented from bonding with their babies, but often even from seeing them.
[00:12:30]  Mothers were sometimes blindfolded during labor.
[00:12:32]  Some social workers urged pregnant young women to sign forms allowing doctors to circumcise their child if it turned out to be a boy, so that the workers could keep mothers uninformed of even their baby's gender.
[00:12:42]  By the time adoption became nationally popular in the mid-1940s, the reversal was complete.
[00:12:46]  And for the first time in history, white single mothers were expected to surrender their babies for adoption.
[00:12:50]  That relinquishment was endorsed by leaders of such reputable organizations as the Child Welfare League of America, the American Public Welfare Association, the Salvation Army, Catholic charities, and most psychiatrists and psychologists led dissenting social scientist Clark Vinson to predict a future in which newborns of all white single mothers would be seized by the state.
[00:13:07]  By the 1950s, 90% of white single- Wait, hold on.
[00:13:10]  Can we go back to the fact that they were blindfolded when giving birth?
[00:13:14]  So they couldn't see them.
[00:13:14]  That must have been so terrifying.
[00:13:16]  Yeah.
[00:13:17]  Holy shit.
[00:13:18]  It's already the worst experience.
[00:13:20]  You're all like drugged up.
[00:13:21]  There's pain.
[00:13:22]  They're going to steal your baby and then like they blindfold you.
[00:13:25]  Yeah.
[00:13:26]  That is nuts.
[00:13:27]  Yeah.
[00:13:28]  Yeah.
[00:13:28]  It's pretty fucked.
[00:13:31]  It's like the only game of hide and seek you're going to ever play with your baby.
[00:13:35]  Ooh.
[00:13:35]  Darling.
[00:13:36]  It's so much sadder when you think about it that way.
[00:13:39]  I know.
[00:13:40]  But there's no seek.
[00:13:41]  No.
[00:13:42]  It's just a game of hide.
[00:13:43]  It's a one-time peekaboo situation.
[00:13:45]  Yeah.
[00:13:46]  By the 1950s, 90% of white women in maternity homes, which is where poor single women tended to give birth, surrendered their children for adoption.
[00:13:54]  So.
[00:13:54]  Damn.
[00:13:55]  Yeah.
[00:13:56]  Georgia also trawled the various orphanages of Tennessee in search of new inventory.
[00:14:00]  One worker recalled, quote, I can still hear her steps down the hallway and see her funny hats.
[00:14:04]  She had big feet and wore black lace-up shoes.
[00:14:06]  She always went upstairs to see the babies.
[00:14:08]  There would be masses of them one day, and they'd be gone the next.
[00:14:11]  Damn.
[00:14:12]  So, Georgia would take pictures of the best babies, which were usually blonde-haired and blue-eyed, and then send them off to prospective clients.
[00:14:17]  These kids were the lucky ones.
[00:14:19]  You know, the kids who were in genuinely bad situations were often probably helped by Georgia's work, but not always.
[00:14:24]  While many of Georgia's kids wound up in the hands of wealthy, loving families, she didn't actually do any kind of vetting at all to make sure of that.
[00:14:30]  The only background check was whether or not the new mom and dad had hundreds of dollars.
[00:14:34]  Exactly.
[00:14:35]  Georgia's kids didn't even all end up in families.
[00:14:37]  In 1929, one of them wound up at the University of Tennessee as a ward of the Home Economics Department, serving as a scholar.
[00:14:43]  Oh my God.
[00:14:45]  A ward of a school department?
[00:14:48]  Serving as a flesh and blood textbook for students.
[00:14:50]  The department changed his name from Richard House to Richard Practice House.
[00:14:55]  What?
[00:14:56]  Yeah.
[00:14:57]  Also, Dick House.
[00:14:59]  What?
[00:15:01]  Practice house?
[00:15:02]  They were like, just so you don't forget that you're essentially chattel.
[00:15:08]  Yeah.
[00:15:09]  Let's fucking change your name to practice guy.
[00:15:12]  A lot of the stuff that went on then did definitely verge on child slavery.
[00:15:16]  It's pretty dark.
[00:15:19]  Ooh.
[00:15:21]  For years, Georgia Tan was seen as an authority on child welfare.
[00:15:24]  She was, in essence, America's chief social worker.
[00:15:26]  Eleanor Roosevelt asked her for advice on improving conditions for poor children.
[00:15:29]  She was invited to collaborate with them.
[00:15:31]  Like, I know how to do it.
[00:15:31]  I know how to do it.
[00:15:32]  You murder them all.
[00:15:33]  Let me steal or kill them.
[00:15:35]  She was invited to collaborate on books about adoption and sought out by the likes of the New York Times for her commentary on stories of abuse in children's homes around the country.
[00:15:42]  This was a dark irony because the reality is that Georgia Tan abused children on a scale and with a viciousness more suited for a concentration camp than an orphanage.
[00:15:51]  Children who were abducted by Georgia would spend weeks, months, or even years in a series of dreadfully crowded boarding homes.
[00:15:57]  These were often just small apartments.
[00:15:58]  A two-bedroom might be filled with as many as 10 children.
[00:16:01]  On at least one instance, six infants were found in a single crib.
[00:16:04]  Babies were fed spoiled milk often because functional refrigerators were not always in the budget.
[00:16:09]  Tens of children would be crammed into spaces condemned by authorities as fire hazards.
[00:16:13]  Georgia refused to pay for medical treatment for kids with syphilis or other contagious diseases.
[00:16:17]  That would have cut into her profit margin.
[00:16:20]  Damn.

=== Luck And Talent In Comedy (03:09) ===

[00:16:21]  Yay!
[00:16:22]  Damn.
[00:16:23]  You know what?
[00:16:24]  Now's a good time for an ad.
[00:16:26]  Pivot products.
[00:16:35]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:16:39]  Rule one: never mess with a country girl.
[00:16:42]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:16:45]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:16:48]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:16:52]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends, oh my god, this is the same man.
[00:16:58]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:17:03]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:17:05]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:17:07]  The cops didn't seem to care, so they take matters into their own hands.
[00:17:12]  They said, oh, hell no.
[00:17:13]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:17:16]  He's gonna get what he deserves.
[00:17:20]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:17:22]  Trust me, babe.
[00:17:23]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:17:32]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:17:38]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:17:43]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:17:48]  Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Levy, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
[00:17:58]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:18:03]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:18:06]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:18:09]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:18:11]  That's so funny.
[00:18:12]  Share each day with me each night, each morning.
[00:18:21]  Say you love me.
[00:18:24]  You know.
[00:18:25]  So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:18:33]  What's up, everyone?
[00:18:34]  I'm Ago Modem.
[00:18:35]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:18:42]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:18:46]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:18:49]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:18:54]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:18:57]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:19:01]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:19:06]  Yeah.
[00:19:06]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:19:09]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:19:10]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:19:19]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:19:21]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.
[00:19:27]  Just hang in there.
[00:19:28]  Yeah, it would not be right.

=== Justifying The Unthinkable (09:32) ===

[00:19:31]  It wouldn't be that.
[00:19:31]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:19:33]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:19:41]  I feel like it was a little bit unbelievable until I really start making money.
[00:19:46]  It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast Eating While Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future.
[00:19:54]  This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum-Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
[00:20:03]  If I'm outside with my parents and they see all these people come up to me for pictures, it's like, what?
[00:20:08]  Today now, obviously, it's like 100%.
[00:20:11]  They believe everything, but at first, it was just like, you got to go get a real job.
[00:20:16]  There's an economic component to communities thriving.
[00:20:19]  If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they fail.
[00:20:23]  And what I mean by fail is they don't have money to pay for food.
[00:20:26]  They cannot feed their kids.
[00:20:27]  They do not have homes.
[00:20:27]  Communities don't work unless there's money flowing through them.
[00:20:31]  Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:20:43]  We're back.
[00:20:44]  I didn't know how to lead into that ad pivot in a graceful way.
[00:20:48]  Yeah, I don't know if you can gracefully transition from baby murder into products and then back to baby murder, but we're doing it.
[00:20:55]  We're doing it because we're going right back to baby murder.
[00:20:58]  Yeah.
[00:20:59]  So we were talking about how she often would refuse to pay for medical treatment for kids with contagious diseases because, of course, that shit's expensive and you're running a bidness here.
[00:21:09]  According to the baby thief, quote, she refused to even acknowledge illness in her children and forbade her boarding mothers from summoning medical help.
[00:21:15]  Faced with desperately sick children, however, some boarding mothers panicked and sent them to the hospital.
[00:21:19]  The trip was often made too late.
[00:21:21]  The deaths of most of these babies were presumably recorded and the children buried in the area of Elmwood Cemetery used by her adoption agency.
[00:21:27]  But Georgia disposed of the bodies of children whose deaths she could conceal in less regular ways.
[00:21:31]  A reporter for the press scimitar passed Georgia's home one night in the 1940s and saw someone burying something in the backyard.
[00:21:38]  A child, the reporter believed.
[00:21:39]  Former investigator Robert Taylor told me that Georgia had had the local Thompson Brothers funeral home cremate some of the children.
[00:21:45]  Getting rid of the evidence, Taylor said.
[00:21:47]  A grave is proof.
[00:21:49]  Damn.
[00:21:50]  Yeah.
[00:21:51]  Pretty fucked up.
[00:21:55]  Charles Carter, a pediatrician who volunteered at the children's home and treated many of Miss Tan's inventory, told Barbara Raymond that Georgia would even overrule his express medical guidance at times.
[00:22:04]  Quote, I had prescribed penicillin and learned later that she'd ordered her nurses to stop giving it to the baby, but continued to chart it as if they were.
[00:22:10]  Georgia Tan simply would not listen.
[00:22:12]  She would say, I'll take your words under advisement, but she never did.
[00:22:15]  She did what she felt best, regardless of what anyone said.
[00:22:18]  She felt she knew the babies and what the babies needed.
[00:22:21]  Plague death.
[00:22:22]  Yeah, plague death.
[00:22:24]  So many of Georgia's children got sick that one hospital in Memphis dedicated an entire ward to taking care of them.
[00:22:30]  A Los Angeles hospital had to do the same thing for the river of sick and dying babies Georgia brought into the city to sell to Hollywood types.
[00:22:36]  By 1932, Memphis, Tennessee had the highest infant death rate of any major American city, mostly thanks to Georgia Tan.
[00:22:44]  Now, we don't know how many babies died in Georgia Tan's care.
[00:22:47]  We do know that in one particularly brutal winter, the winter of 1945, as many as 50 babies died in the children's home alone.
[00:22:54]  Babies died when they were left out in the sun unattended.
[00:22:57]  Some died within days of arriving in their adoptive homes because no care had been taken to make sure they were fed or medicated in the days and weeks before transit.
[00:23:03]  In at least one case, Georgia Tan abducted a set of premature twins and removed them from the hospital before they were stable.
[00:23:09]  Both twins died.
[00:23:10]  In total, it's estimated that as many as 500 babies died in Georgia Tan's care.
[00:23:15]  The real death toll may be even higher, perhaps much higher.
[00:23:18]  Yeah, that's kind of what it seems.
[00:23:19]  500 doesn't seem right.
[00:23:20]  Seems like she might have killed a couple thousand babies.
[00:23:22]  Yeah, definitely.
[00:23:23]  Yeah, definitely.
[00:23:24]  Yeah, 500 is kind of the minimum.
[00:23:27]  It doesn't, yeah, it doesn't even make sense.
[00:23:28]  And if you're saying about someone, they killed at least 500 babies, kind of, I can't really imagine much worse.
[00:23:35]  Like, the only other people you can say that about are usually like concentration camp guards.
[00:23:40]  Like, yeah, like, when you're talking about that many dead babies, that's so many dead babies.
[00:23:45]  People that orchestrate like specifically, genocide.
[00:23:48]  Yeah yeah, like it's Georgia Tan and genocide committers.
[00:23:51]  I know it's.
[00:23:52]  I mean, she's a death all-star.
[00:23:55]  Yeah, definitely an achiever geez, overachiever.
[00:23:59]  People ask a lot.
[00:24:00]  You know you should cover more women bastards on the show, which we're doing, but it's Georgia Tan.
[00:24:06]  She's like she belongs on the list.
[00:24:08]  Yeah man, she's.
[00:24:10]  She's right up there.
[00:24:11]  She's right up there.
[00:24:11]  She's one of the worst people i've heard about.
[00:24:14]  So question, is she single?
[00:24:15]  Yeah well no actually uh, she had a partner who was I sent, I think, on paper her secretary because she was a lesbian.
[00:24:23]  But did she help murder the babies?
[00:24:25]  Probably right yeah, we don't not.
[00:24:27]  I mean not that I know of, but probably right yeah um, I don't know how you wouldn't be aware of that if your girlfriend's like yeah, heavy into murder and probably seeps into your relationship and from what little we know about it, it seems like it was a pretty abusive relationship.
[00:24:42]  Georgia was definitely the dominant one.
[00:24:44]  Oh yeah yeah, and uh, it would be a shocker if you were like she was the abused one and be like oh, my god she's, that's what she's taking out on the babies.
[00:24:52]  Yeah, but clearly something happened to her right, her dad was pretty domineering and a dick and like wouldn't let her be a lawyer and stuff yeah, but that doesn't lead to baby murder.
[00:25:01]  I just mean like, do you think she was abused to have like a weird preoccupation with babies like that?
[00:25:05]  Yeah, I think she was abused.
[00:25:07]  I think um, she got addicted to like the sense of setting these babies up with somebody and I think I think some of it is just like.
[00:25:15]  You know, she came from this period of time where you didn't really give that much of a shit about babies in like the 1890s.
[00:25:22]  Like you know, I think people like thinking of themselves as a good person, even when they're doing terrible things.
[00:25:26]  So she probably was like I am saving these babies, and she really believed it and she thought the ones that died well, they would have grown up poor and that's worse than death.
[00:25:33]  Right exactly, or what does it matter?
[00:25:35]  Yeah, or like they were supposed to die yeah, I mean you can say anything to yourself when you're like trying to justify some fucked up shit.
[00:25:41]  You really can't.
[00:25:41]  I say that shit when i'm like getting you know like an extra fucking TACO BELL thing that I don't need.
[00:25:47]  It's like you know, it's it's really close to baby murder.
[00:25:50]  Basically getting that more detail, that you didn't need TACO BELL.
[00:25:54]  Uh sponsored the show and we will stop comparing your products to murdering babies.
[00:25:59]  No no no, it's way better.
[00:26:00]  It's TACO BELL, better than killing a baby.
[00:26:03]  Ding, that's a slogan right there.
[00:26:06]  Let's sell some fucking again merch.
[00:26:08]  I'm just coming up with all these merch ideas and I feel like you should pay me.
[00:26:12]  So, thank you, we'll let you know if the TACO BELL people reach out.
[00:26:15]  Yeah, I think they're gonna have to.
[00:26:17]  I think that they're really gonna like this.
[00:26:18]  This is an unbeatable ad campaign.
[00:26:22]  Yeah yeah, better than murdering a baby.
[00:26:25]  So uh, one of the babies that Georgia Tan murdered was the daughter of Alma Sipple.
[00:26:30]  In the spring of 1946, miss Sipple moved to Memphis with her infant daughter and two-year-old son.
[00:26:35]  Her boyfriend, Julius Talos, was in the military and had just left for Panama.
[00:26:39]  They planned to marry Alma later recalled quote, we were so crazy about each other it didn't matter if we were married or not.
[00:26:45]  So six weeks after moving to Memphis, Alma was visited by a representative of the Children's HOME Society named Georgia Tan.
[00:26:51]  Georgia said she was looking into allegations of child abuse against one of Alma's neighbors.
[00:26:56]  So at first Alma, Nothing was wrong, at least not with her.
[00:26:59]  The next day, Georgia Tan returned in her large black limo.
[00:27:02]  This time, she had questions about the child's father, questions Alma Sipple could not comfortably answer.
[00:27:06]  Next, according to the New York Post, quote, the woman looked at Irma, who had a runny nose, and said, Your baby's sick, isn't she?
[00:27:13]  You should get her a checkup.
[00:27:14]  Sipple explained that she had no money for a doctor, so the woman generously offered to take the child to the Memphis General Hospital.
[00:27:21]  Looking back, Sipple wonders at her own naivete.
[00:27:24]  How did I mess up so bad?
[00:27:25]  I guess she knew the dumb ones.
[00:27:27]  Still, she had been worried about her baby's health, and she'd assumed that she would go with them to the hospital.
[00:27:31]  So she had signed a piece of paper.
[00:27:33]  When Tan had told her it would be impossible for her to go along, Sipple remembers, I had a weird feeling, but I thought, well, you've got to trust somebody.
[00:27:41]  The paper was so sad.
[00:27:42]  Yeah, paper was, of course, a surrender of parental rights.
[00:27:45]  Yeah, of course.
[00:27:46]  Sipple's baby went along with Georgia Tan, and that was the last Alma ever saw of her.
[00:27:50]  When she showed up at the children's ward of the hospital the next day to inquire as to her child's status, the nurse told her, you don't have a baby in there.
[00:27:57]  Those children belong to the Children's Home Society.
[00:28:00]  For days, Alma Sipple called the children's home and Georgia Tan.
[00:28:03]  No one answered until weeks later, Georgia picked up and told her that her daughter had died of pneumonia in the same sort of way you might tell someone a carton of eggs had broken.
[00:28:11]  Being a human, Alma said that she wanted to bury her child.
[00:28:14]  Georgia told her that would not be possible, saying the state had put her daughter away.
[00:28:18]  After that, Alma says, I guess I went crazy.
[00:28:20]  She left the other children in her mother's charge and went to Memphis to find her baby's grave.
[00:28:24]  She never located it because, of course, Georgia Tan never bothered to give her baby a grave.
[00:28:30]  Cool.
[00:28:32]  Fun story.
[00:28:33]  You got a joke to liven this up?
[00:28:38]  Liven that one up?
[00:28:39]  Nah.
[00:28:40]  Well, I guess it's time for another ad pivot.
[00:28:46]  Oh, I mean, this baby murdering story was always going to be a rough one to pivot to products with.
[00:28:56]  Buy stuff.
[00:28:58]  But not babies.
[00:28:59]  No.
[00:29:00]  The only thing you should not buy is babies.
[00:29:02]  Buy is people.

=== Don't Buy People (03:18) ===

[00:29:04]  Yeah.
[00:29:05]  Grown up or small.
[00:29:07]  You know, let's just put it.
[00:29:09]  I don't want to.
[00:29:09]  Don't buy people.
[00:29:10]  Yeah, I'm not trying to be, you know, all controversial.
[00:29:14]  Yeah, not trying to be anti-capitalist here.
[00:29:15]  Just maybe don't buy people.
[00:29:17]  No, it's probably a good rule of thumb.
[00:29:19]  Maybe keep that line.
[00:29:22]  Products!
[00:29:28]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:29:32]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:29:36]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:29:38]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:29:42]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:29:46]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends...
[00:29:49]  Oh my god, this is the same man.
[00:29:51]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:29:56]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:29:58]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:30:00]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:30:02]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:30:05]  They said, oh, hell no.
[00:30:07]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:30:09]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:30:13]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:30:15]  Trust me, babe.
[00:30:16]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:30:26]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:30:31]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:30:36]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:30:42]  Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
[00:30:51]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:30:56]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:31:00]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:31:02]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:31:04]  That's so funny.
[00:31:06]  Share each day with me each night, each morning.
[00:31:14]  Say you love me.
[00:31:17]  You know I.
[00:31:19]  So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:31:26]  What's up, everyone?
[00:31:27]  I'm Ago Modem.
[00:31:28]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:31:36]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:31:39]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:31:42]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:31:47]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:31:50]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:31:54]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:31:59]  Yeah.
[00:31:59]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:32:02]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:32:04]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:32:12]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:32:14]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.
[00:32:21]  Just hang in there.

=== Dark Secrets Of Orphanages (15:30) ===

[00:32:22]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:32:24]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:32:25]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:32:26]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:32:34]  I feel like it was a little bit unbelievable until I really started making money.
[00:32:39]  It's financial literacy month, and the podcast Eating While Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future.
[00:32:47]  This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
[00:32:56]  If I'm outside with my parents and they're seeing all these people come up to me for pictures, it's like, what?
[00:33:01]  Today now, obviously, it's like 100%.
[00:33:05]  They believe everything.
[00:33:06]  But at first, it was just like, you got to go get a real job.
[00:33:09]  There's an economic component to communities thriving.
[00:33:12]  If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they fail.
[00:33:16]  And what I mean by fail is they don't have money to pay for food.
[00:33:19]  They cannot feed their kids.
[00:33:20]  They do not have homes.
[00:33:21]  Communities don't work unless there's money flowing through them.
[00:33:25]  Listen to Eating Wall Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:33:36]  We're back.
[00:33:38]  Good products, solid services.
[00:33:40]  Let's get back to talking about horrible things.
[00:33:45]  Babies.
[00:33:45]  Murder.
[00:33:47]  Now, at this point, I'll bet you might think something along the lines of Georgia Tan couldn't possibly get any worse.
[00:33:52]  Well, straw man listener, you are dumb for thinking that.
[00:33:55]  Of course she can get worse.
[00:33:57]  In addition to stealing thousands of babies and killing hundreds of people.
[00:34:00]  This is where the molestation comes in.
[00:34:02]  Yep.
[00:34:02]  Yeah.
[00:34:02]  I was waiting for that.
[00:34:03]  Yeah, she molested a bunch of babies.
[00:34:05]  Yeah.
[00:34:05]  One of her victims as a 54-year-old man from Memphis, you know, definitely.
[00:34:09]  She molested boy babies?
[00:34:10]  Yeah.
[00:34:10]  Yeah, it seems like it.
[00:34:11]  Oh, see, this is interesting.
[00:34:13]  I think both genders.
[00:34:15]  Yeah, sometimes people who molest molest really young, so it's not much of a difference.
[00:34:20]  Not much of a difference.
[00:34:22]  Just wants them to be probably like helpless.
[00:34:25]  Yeah, I think that's the bigger part of it.
[00:34:28]  So one of her victims, you know, decades later is a 54-year-old man, claimed he and his twin brother were molested by Georgia when they were eight.
[00:34:35]  He told the Daily Pantograph, quote, we remember being in a big bed stripped naked.
[00:34:39]  Georgia Tan and some other people were there reaching for us and kissing us and touching us where we shouldn't be touched.
[00:34:45]  Sexual assault and physical assault sort of blended together for many of Georgia's victims.
[00:34:49]  One of them, a young girl named Mary, recalled Georgia beating her with a wooden spoon in a bathroom.
[00:34:53]  She squatted over me, gouging me.
[00:34:55]  She seemed like a giant.
[00:34:56]  She was sadistic, evil.
[00:34:57]  I thought of her as the devil.
[00:34:59]  Damn.
[00:34:59]  Another ad uptee, five years old at the time of the abuse, recalled to Barbara Raymond that, yes, sexual abuse at the hands of Georgia Tan was very true, and it was presented as your favor.
[00:35:08]  She says the abuse occurred in a gorgeous room.
[00:35:10]  I remember the shock of the room, so overwhelming and beautiful.
[00:35:13]  I remember being told to come sit in her lap.
[00:35:15]  I keep trying to block it all out, but it keeps coming.
[00:35:17]  It's caused me a lot of problems.
[00:35:18]  You won't find a whole lot of healthy adults who went through there.
[00:35:22]  Now, over the course of this podcast, I've referred to Georgia's children as products and inventory several times.
[00:35:27]  This was not a joke on my part.
[00:35:28]  Georgia Tan's own lawyer called them products.
[00:35:31]  He wrote to one of her clients in 1944, it is not often we have the good luck that we have in your case, namely, of having the merchandise in hand to stock and deliver to you immediately.
[00:35:40]  This is a baby, he was talking about.
[00:35:42]  On an occasion in which he couldn't fulfill an order, he told another client, this is one business in which we can never tell when we can fill an order.
[00:35:49]  You know, you just never know.
[00:35:51]  Just hold on a second until we steal another baby.
[00:35:53]  Yeah.
[00:35:54]  Human babies were treated very much as commodities in this industry.
[00:35:57]  As the baby thief records, quote, blue eyes were a decided advantage, as was female gender.
[00:36:02]  Baby girls are more feminine, alluring.
[00:36:04]  They are grand little self-advisors, and they know instinctively how to strut their stuff.
[00:36:07]  They stretch out their dimpled arms, gurgle at some secret baby joke, blow air bubbles from moist Cupid's bow mouths, and women and strong men grow mad, become besoted with adoration, and want to kidnap them on the spot.
[00:36:19]  The author contended that males with the wrong hair color were at a distinct disadvantage.
[00:36:23]  If a boy is redheaded, his chance of finding a new mama or papa is practically zero.
[00:36:27]  Nobody wants him at all.
[00:36:29]  I mean, we were joking about that.
[00:36:31]  Yeah.
[00:36:31]  That's fucked up.
[00:36:32]  That's super fucked up.
[00:36:34]  Brandon, a young child abducted by Georgia Tan, later recalled what it was like being abducted for sale.
[00:36:38]  Quote, We were herded into the car and brought back to Memphis.
[00:36:41]  When we got there, they dropped my two brothers off at another holding place and they took me to the house on Poplar.
[00:36:46]  I remember the parties where they would dress up the children and take them downstairs for a meet-and-greet.
[00:36:50]  Some of the children would come back, some wouldn't.
[00:36:53]  Cool.
[00:36:54]  Virginia Simmons, one of the babies sold by Georgia Tan, later recalled that she felt like she was ordered like, quote, out of a Sears Roebuck catalog.
[00:37:01]  When she developed scoliosis, her new mother rejected her, saying, I spent a lot of money on you, and you're such a disappointment.
[00:37:07]  If I knew you were going to develop that crooked back, I would never have picked you out.
[00:37:10]  Wow.
[00:37:11]  Cool.
[00:37:12]  All told, Georgia is suspected of arranging, at minimum, 5,000 adoptions.
[00:37:17]  In her career, she built the bones of the modern adoption system that persists nationally and worldwide today.
[00:37:22]  In the mid-40s, she was diagnosed with uterine cancer, which would kill her in 1950.
[00:37:27]  This coincided with the gradual collapse of her adoption empire.
[00:37:30]  For one thing, Boss Crump's influence had started to crumble in this period.
[00:37:33]  Crump's political nemesis, Gordon Browning, had been elected governor in 1948.
[00:37:37]  He'd gone after Georgia Tan as a way to attach Boss Crumb crumbled.
[00:37:41]  Boss Crump Crumbles.
[00:37:43]  Yeah.
[00:37:44]  That has to have been a newspaper headline.
[00:37:46]  Yeah.
[00:37:47]  Boss Crump Crumbles.
[00:37:48]  Yeah, 100%.
[00:37:49]  100%.
[00:37:50]  I think it's crazy that she, okay, obviously crazy that she molested those kids, but that one kid said there were other people in the room molesting with her.
[00:37:57]  So like she clearly arranged these like weird sex parties where like her children could get abused like en masse.
[00:38:04]  That's like.
[00:38:05]  Yeah.
[00:38:06]  That's fucking crazy.
[00:38:08]  Yeah.
[00:38:08]  And it was also one of the things that's the and the baby thief makes a good point of pointing this out is that in this period of time at orphanages and stuff, an awful lot and perhaps most of the employees and like you're talking about the 30s, 40s, 50s molested the kids.
[00:38:24]  Like that was kind of like why you do a job that terrible.
[00:38:26]  Yeah.
[00:38:27]  Like that, because it's like a little bonus for you.
[00:38:29]  Yeah, is your pedophile.
[00:38:31]  This is 100% like a lifetime series.
[00:38:34]  Yeah.
[00:38:34]  You know, like they did that one about that lady who with the Munchausen syndrome.
[00:38:39]  Oh God, the, yeah, I know the one you're talking about.
[00:38:43]  This is very much this.
[00:38:45]  Like this definitely should be a multi-part story because this is so crazy.
[00:38:48]  It's one of those things it should be, but also like, I don't know how many people are going to be able to listen to all of this episode.
[00:38:55]  Yeah, I don't, like, it's just so dark.
[00:38:58]  Yeah.
[00:38:58]  Like, yeah.
[00:39:01]  Yeah, you would only want to watch that movie if there's like serious comeuppance.
[00:39:05]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:39:06]  And uterine cancer is like kind of a weird, ironic cancer to have a situation.
[00:39:13]  But I say that as a breast cancer survivor.
[00:39:15]  Yeah.
[00:39:16]  My, my cancer was not ironic.
[00:39:18]  It was just straight up.
[00:39:20]  But hers, that's super ironic.
[00:39:22]  Every now and then, cancer gets it right.
[00:39:26]  For real.
[00:39:27]  For real.
[00:39:28]  Now, as Georgia was in the later stages of her cancer, Governor Browning appointed a special investigator to look into her child abduction work.
[00:39:35]  The case was announced in September of 1950, less than a month before her death.
[00:39:38]  It was the sort of justice you can expect from politicians, late enough to avoid any real conflict or controversy.
[00:39:44]  Most of the allegations against Georgia had to do with her improper allocation of the funds she had made through adopting out children.
[00:39:50]  They only care about the money.
[00:39:51]  They only cared about the money, not her mass kidnapping, rape, or all the dead babies.
[00:39:54]  Yeah.
[00:39:55]  After Tan's death.
[00:39:56]  Sounds like America.
[00:39:57]  Sounds like America, right?
[00:39:59]  After Tan's death, Justice Kelly retired from the judgeship.
[00:40:02]  She was protected from prosecution until her death in 1955.
[00:40:06]  Great.
[00:40:06]  Georgia's life has had a number of long-standing impacts.
[00:40:09]  For one thing, the concept of adoption was normalized on a national level.
[00:40:12]  The shame around it was gone, which was an objectively good thing.
[00:40:15]  However, another holdover from Georgia Tan's career is the fact that adoption records were sealed and adopted children were held back from knowing the identities of their birth parents.
[00:40:23]  In many parts of the United States, the law still works this way.
[00:40:26]  A holdover from the era of Georgia Tan because it made it easier for her to sell and abduct and molest babies.
[00:40:32]  Has any work been done in trying to locate all the kids?
[00:40:35]  Yeah.
[00:40:36]  A lot of that work has been done.
[00:40:37]  Some by like the kids themselves.
[00:40:39]  There's a lot of people who have tracked down their own history.
[00:40:41]  Barbara Raymond, the author of The Baby Thief, did a lot of that work and has done very good journalism to try and put it together.
[00:40:48]  It's one of those things it will never have a comprehensive list because there was a criminal enterprise.
[00:40:54]  Yeah, she specifically hid a lot of the things so you wouldn't be able to figure out.
[00:40:58]  But I just feel like what an crazy thing to grow up and then find out that you were one of the babies that was abducted.
[00:41:04]  Whether you had a nice life with your parents or not, it would still flip you out to find something like that out.
[00:41:09]  Yeah.
[00:41:09]  And I didn't include a lot of the stories that she does in the baby thieves about what these people, like these stolen babies, like the trauma they dealt with as adults.
[00:41:17]  But like a lot of them, their lives were just fucked because they were old enough that they remembered being ripped from their mom's arms.
[00:41:23]  They were five or six when it happened.
[00:41:25]  And they spent their whole lives trying to find their parents again.
[00:41:28]  And then it would turn out their mom had died or whatever.
[00:41:33]  It's just terrible.
[00:41:34]  It's just the worst.
[00:41:36]  Like I said, this might be the most depressing episode of the show we ever do.
[00:41:39]  I have trouble imagining like obviously.
[00:41:42]  Someone recovering from this?
[00:41:44]  Yeah, I have trouble imagining a worse tale than this tale of Georgia Tan and what she did.
[00:41:50]  Yeah.
[00:41:50]  Like there's even like obviously like on an objective like level of scale, stuff like a concentration camp is worse and bigger and involved a lot more people.
[00:41:59]  But on like a level of human evil, there's something about Georgia Tan specifically that's so wretched.
[00:42:07]  It's really hard to talk about.
[00:42:10]  Yeah, murder obviously is terrible, but when you think about like children, like babies being murdered who are the most innocent of what we have, then it is like a different level.
[00:42:23]  And then yeah, when you add the slavery and the molestation into it, and then you think about how many people it, because it broke up families.
[00:42:29]  It didn't just break them.
[00:42:31]  Yeah.
[00:42:32]  Break the children.
[00:42:32]  It broke the moms, the dads.
[00:42:34]  Yeah, you're talking and their siblings.
[00:42:36]  Like you're talking about mass, mass generational trauma that you're like, that's your legacy, essentially.
[00:42:44]  Tens of thousands of victims.
[00:42:45]  You know, if you're talking about 5,000 babies stolen, tens of thousands of victims, it's yeah, and I mean, probably those numbers are low, too.
[00:42:53]  Probably those numbers are very low.
[00:42:54]  Yeah, at least these are just best estimates.
[00:42:57]  Yup.
[00:42:58]  And I mean, I feel like there's kind of a weird, interesting level of maybe sexism that plays into it where it's like women maybe are given more leeway in things like this because they're like, well, women are natural caretakers, caregivers.
[00:43:13]  Women are naturally maternal.
[00:43:15]  Women naturally are drawn to children.
[00:43:17]  So I feel like then when you have like a woman who's like heading and spearheading a campaign and is like, I'm doing this and I'm helping babies, I think people are more likely to believe her or something because of that level of like women are natural.
[00:43:31]  Yeah.
[00:43:32]  You're getting two sides of sexism there because she's able to get away with it because of this idea that like, you know, she's a woman doing this.
[00:43:38]  This is what they should be doing.
[00:43:39]  She knows what's best for these kids.
[00:43:41]  But also they're getting taken from single mothers because single mothers are seen as incapable of raising.
[00:43:45]  Like it's, it's this like double-edged sword of sexism.
[00:43:49]  Yeah.
[00:43:49]  I mean, it hurts everybody.
[00:43:50]  And also when you think about the fact that like, who knows what would have happened if she had been allowed to be a lawyer, right?
[00:43:56]  That's also another level of sexism.
[00:43:58]  Just been like a fucking process.
[00:44:00]  Maybe she just would have been terrible on a smaller scale without baby murder.
[00:44:04]  But also like you just, you don't know.
[00:44:06]  And the fact that like she has that abuse thing and whatever, it's like, who knows what the fuck her dad did to her?
[00:44:11]  Yeah.
[00:44:11]  You know, it's like, yeah, he was, he was domineering.
[00:44:14]  Who knows?
[00:44:15]  There might have been like a level of like he molested her and then that fucked her up for the rest of her life.
[00:44:19]  And I feel like, yeah, just like the amount of sexism and not trusting women also and letting people, the signing away of parental rights and then having women have no power to get them back.
[00:44:30]  Like, yeah, it's all a weird sexism goes both ways in a really weird way in this story.
[00:44:35]  It's pretty bad.
[00:44:41]  Well, Sophia.
[00:44:42]  Also, sorry, but I think it's crazy that no one talks about this.
[00:44:47]  I know, right?
[00:44:48]  Right.
[00:44:48]  How is this the first time?
[00:44:50]  And this is actually, I should give some credit too.
[00:44:52]  A couple of different fans have independently suggested that I look into Georgia Tan for some time.
[00:44:57]  Yeah, that's an that's incredible story.
[00:44:59]  I can't believe we didn't, I didn't know that.
[00:45:00]  Never heard of this lady before.
[00:45:02]  Right.
[00:45:02]  And it's fucking nuts.
[00:45:03]  And she's like a big building block in our society.
[00:45:07]  It's so nuts.
[00:45:09]  The modern system of adoption?
[00:45:11]  Nobody talks about it.
[00:45:12]  Stealing babies.
[00:45:13]  Yeah.
[00:45:14]  Which like adoption, I think, is objectively one of the best things you can do.
[00:45:17]  You know, of course.
[00:45:18]  Giving a kid a family, but not this way.
[00:45:20]  Not like SVU style.
[00:45:22]  Yeah, not like ordering them out of a catalog, being like, I'd like a blonde.
[00:45:26]  Yeah.
[00:45:27]  Yeah, man.
[00:45:28]  Yeah.
[00:45:29]  That's rough.
[00:45:30]  Sorry, Ric Flair.
[00:45:31]  Oh, my God.
[00:45:32]  Also, has Ric Flair ever talked about this?
[00:45:34]  I don't know.
[00:45:35]  Because, oh, my God, can we please reach out to him and be like, this is crazy, Ric Flair?
[00:45:40]  What do you think?
[00:45:40]  I mean, part of me is like, if he, if he's lucky enough to not remember it, I probably wouldn't want to push on somebody to like look into that part of their past.
[00:45:48]  Like, and it wasn't bad.
[00:45:49]  You're afraid of upsetting Ric Flair.
[00:45:51]  I mean, that's a tough thing to have in your background.
[00:45:54]  Ric Flair's a wrestler, but he's still a person.
[00:45:57]  I'm not saying he's not a person, but I'm saying, like, maybe it would also bring him peace to talk about it.
[00:46:03]  Yeah.
[00:46:03]  If Ric Flair wants to come on the show and talk about being abducted as a baby, like, yeah, weird.
[00:46:09]  We'd love to talk to you.
[00:46:10]  Yeah.
[00:46:12]  And also, any listeners that have listened to this, they're like, this was part of my family or something.
[00:46:16]  They should reach out because what an insane thing.
[00:46:19]  Suspect at least one person is going to be like, oh, shit, my grandma or my mom or whatever.
[00:46:26]  And I'm sure at a certain point, when you find that out, you want to find all the people that this has happened to because it's such a particular awful thing that you kind of want to have a sense of belonging to somewhere to talk to somebody about it that knows what it's like.
[00:46:41]  Well, and one of the things that occurs to me now is that, you know, Georgia Tan, we're looking at her victim count is around 5,000 or so, but like she is the reason why for decades it was the norm to just take babies from single women when they give birth.
[00:46:56]  So really, that's maybe even a couple of million victims.
[00:46:59]  Yeah, that's a horrible thing.
[00:47:00]  I don't know how many women that happened to, but that's insane.
[00:47:02]  Like, I didn't know that was just the norm for until pretty recently.
[00:47:07]  Like, not when I was like, but when my parents were young adults, like they might have given birth to me, you know, like the doctor who delivered me might have delivered babies a few years earlier and handed them straight to an adoption agency, basically.
[00:47:23]  Like, that's fucking wild.
[00:47:25]  Yeah, that's crazy.
[00:47:28]  Cool.
[00:47:29]  Have fun, everyone.
[00:47:30]  Have a great day.
[00:47:32]  All of this information.
[00:47:34]  Now you're ready to take on the rest of your day.
[00:47:38]  Feeling positive.
[00:47:40]  Yeah, I know a lot of people listen to this show.
[00:47:41]  Driving in my car on the way home.
[00:47:43]  Driving to work, and you're going to have a lot of dead-eyed people in work today thinking about all the babies George has stolen, murdered, and arrested.
[00:47:51]  We're all sorry about that.

=== Shirts And Trigger Warnings (04:43) ===

[00:47:53]  Sorry.
[00:47:53]  You know what podcast is.
[00:47:55]  I warned people up front.
[00:47:56]  You did.
[00:47:56]  I did.
[00:47:57]  You gave a trigger warning.
[00:47:58]  I did.
[00:47:59]  This is the only time I've done that.
[00:48:02]  I mean, I feel like I'm triggered a little bit, feeling a little sad.
[00:48:06]  I feel like you should be after this.
[00:48:08]  Yeah.
[00:48:09]  Do some aftercare.
[00:48:10]  Listen to.
[00:48:11]  I still don't know what the show is, but the name Come Town makes me laugh.
[00:48:16]  And the comeboys.
[00:48:19]  I'm just going to make myself come after this.
[00:48:22]  That's the only way to recover.
[00:48:23]  That is the better.
[00:48:24]  I want the glow, that post-masturbatory glow to envelop me and to obscure any negativity from this.
[00:48:32]  Wipe out the horror of Georgia Tan's existence.
[00:48:35]  Yeah.
[00:48:35]  And I've said that, like, I'm for sure going to remember her name.
[00:48:38]  Yeah.
[00:48:38]  Yeah, it'll be stuck in everybody's head.
[00:48:41]  Just like.
[00:48:42]  No, but we got to think about Rufus Raspberry.
[00:48:44]  Rufus Raspberry.
[00:48:46]  That's that's the uh walk away with that.
[00:48:48]  Rufus Raspberry Boss Crumb.
[00:48:50]  Yeah.
[00:48:51]  We got Rufus Raspberry.
[00:48:53]  Yeah.
[00:48:54]  Think about that.
[00:48:55]  Yeah.
[00:48:55]  God, it does sound like an old TV show.
[00:48:58]  Yeah.
[00:48:59]  All right.
[00:49:00]  Uh, Sophia, you want to plug them pluggables?
[00:49:04]  Sure.
[00:49:04]  Um, find me on Twitter and Instagram at theSophia.
[00:49:08]  T-H-E-So have SO-F-I-Y-A.
[00:49:13]  And I co-host a podcast called Private Parts Unknown, where we talk about love and sexuality around the world.
[00:49:19]  So come listen to that.
[00:49:22]  See you M. See you M. I'm Robert Evans, probably, and I have a website behindthebastards.com.
[00:49:31]  You can find us on the Twinstagram at BastardsPod.
[00:49:33]  I'm doing that from now on.
[00:49:34]  So if you're calling them the Twinstagram, it's the way it's going to work.
[00:49:39]  We sell shirts tpublic.com for Behind the Bastards.
[00:49:44]  Buy a shirt.
[00:49:45]  Buy stickers, cups, hand grenades.
[00:49:49]  You can buy an it could happen here shirt if you want people to know that it could happen here.
[00:49:53]  That's a good thing to do.
[00:49:54]  We'll probably have other shirts soon.
[00:49:58]  Tweet at us with ideas.
[00:50:00]  Podcasts, good times.
[00:50:02]  I love, let's say, 90% of you.
[00:50:06]  I feel like we need to up that in light of how depressed this all is.
[00:50:09]  Bye.
[00:50:16]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[00:50:24]  I vowed I will be his last target.
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[00:50:29]  He's going to get what he deserves.
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[00:50:35]  Listen to the girlfriends.
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[00:50:38]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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[00:50:47]  Hey there, folks.
[00:50:48]  Amy Roebuck and TJ Holmes here.
[00:50:50]  And we know there is a lot of news coming at you these days from the war with Iran to the ongoing Epstein fallout, government shutdowns, high-profile trials, and what the hell is that Blake Lively thing about anyway?
[00:51:03]  We are on it every day, all day.
[00:51:05]  Follow us, Amy and TJ, for news updates throughout the day.
[00:51:08]  Listen to Amy and TJ on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
[00:51:18]  It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast Eating Wild Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future.
[00:51:26]  This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
[00:51:35]  There's an economic component to communities thriving.
[00:51:39]  If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they fail.
[00:51:43]  Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:51:51]  On a recent episode of the podcast Money and Wealth with John O'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the Budginista Alicia to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
[00:52:01]  What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
[00:52:08]  We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts too many of us were never, ever taught.
[00:52:16]  If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
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